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Renovation Plans in Limbo, Roland Garros Faces Future

Rain delayed play at the French Open on Tuesday. Roland Garros will not have a roof over the main court before 2018, if then.Credit
Vincent Kessler/Reuters

PARIS — Another day’s play at the French Open was about to begin, and the tournament’s director, Gilbert Ysern, sat in his office chair with clenched fists and delivered a series of mock blows to his own chin.

“Look, I’d be lying if I said there weren’t days when we are a bit punch-drunk,” Ysern said. “There are lots of things that have hit us and are happening that are not so easy to handle.”

It has been a challenging stretch indeed for those who run what is still the world’s premier clay-court tournament, and the obstacle course is far from finished.

The tussle with the players over prize money appears to be resolved for now after this year’s commitment to a major pay raise of $12.9 million through 2016.

Absorbing that cost (and everything else) will not be straightforward, but the bigger issue is what truly happens next for Roland Garros, which is by far the smallest in acreage of the four Grand Slam events and is still trying to push through its plans to expand into the adjacent botanical gardens and put a roof over its primary court, the Philippe Chatrier Court.

The rain on Tuesday, which delayed play for several hours, was only the latest reminder of what Roland Garros was still missing. While the Australian Open is completing work on its third stadium with a retractable roof and Wimbledon has announced plans to start work on its second roof-equipped court, the French Open is now looking at completing its reconstruction work and expansion in 2018 at the earliest after initially targeting 2016.

That is only if the French Tennis Federation and city of Paris win an ongoing legal battle over the project’s existence.

“In the French mentality right now, every time there’s a project, whether it’s cultural or sports-oriented, there are always problems,” said Jean Gachassin, the president of the French federation. “We can’t do anything normally. Before we move a tree or a flower bed or raise something 10 meters, we need permits and everything gets contested. We knew it before we started, so we just have to try not to get impatient.”

But Gachassin said the expansion project, part of the 2011 decision to keep the tournament in Paris instead of moving it to the suburbs, was critical.

“To save the tournament, we have to be able to make this project a reality,” Gachassin said. “By save it, I mean that without this project, we’re going to be in competition with other countries who want to do the same thing. I know we are being threatened by certain regions of the world like Asia, or a Qatar, who has lots of money and want to build big stadiums. But there won’t be the soul and the history, just lots of money.”

It seems far-fetched to imagine the French Open losing its Grand Slam status in the near future no matter how many grand courts are built in emerging or mature markets. But it is certainly possible to imagine it slipping to last place in the Grand Slam pecking order with the Australian Open rising, and the United States Open recently mending fences with the players with a huge pay raise and then completing a new television agreement with ESPN worth a reported $75 million annually.

“All the Grand Slam events have a different personality and culture,” Ysern said. “And though we are, so to speak, in competition, because we don’t resemble each other, we don’t need to worry if in one area we’ll be a bit behind the others: if the Americans have a bit more means than us. I think what’s important is to maintain a real difference with the other tournaments, the Masters 1000s above all.”

Masters 1000 events are the regular tour’s top events. For now only two have retractable roofs: Madrid and Shanghai. But few venues can go from chic to refugee camp as quickly as Roland Garros in the rain, where the lack of cover and wide walkways can make much of the site feel like a Métro car at rush hour with the added obstacle of open umbrellas. Even when it doesn’t rain, there is clearly an elbow-room issue.

Five more years without a roof seems rather a long time to remain vulnerable in a hyper-competitive industry, although the French Open is not the only Grand Slam event in this predicament. The United States Open’s leadership has announced its desire to put a roof over Arthur Ashe Stadium but has yet to commit to a project, in part because of the engineering challenges posed by the existing stadium and the site.

The French have their plan, which they introduced in full on Saturday, and it will essentially rebuild the Chatrier court on the existing foundations, giving it a markedly sleeker and more modern look. To manage the construction while staging the tournament each year without a break, the French will have to work section by section in 10-month phases.

The goal is not merely to rebuild a structure that can support a roof, which, like Wimbledon’s over Centre Court, will be of the unfolding variety. The French federation’s goal is also to modernize facilities.

Nostalgic tennis types have had a rough go of late. The casualties have included Wimbledon’s atmospheric Courts 1 and 2. Now, as part of the proposed expansion and beautification plan, Roland Garros is scheduled to lose the round and raucous Court 1, known as the Bullring, and also its own Court 2, a holdover from the stadium’s early years that is short on space but long on character and quirk.

‘'It’s true,'’ Ysern said. ‘'But for this project to work we have to get rid of it. And when we do improve the site, we are going to do as little as we can and try to keep the soul and the spirit of the place. That’s the most important thing.'’

Essentially a narrow triangle, Roland Garros has long been hemmed in on both its long sides, with the Bois de Boulogne to the north and the city of Boulogne-Billancourt to the south. But if it does succeed in expanding east into the botanical gardens, the result could be stunning.

There has never been a tennis court like the one they are proposing to build in the gardens: sunken below ground level with greenhouses surrounding it on all four sides. The route from the existing tournament site to that court would take spectators down a walkway flanked by elegant, stone-faced buildings.

But there is ecological opposition and other opposition, and the initial project was rejected by an administrative court in Paris in February, which cited the gardens’ status as “a historical monument” and noted that the fee being paid by the French federation to the city was insufficient.

The city of Paris, which owns the land, and the federation filed an appeal, but concurrently reached a new agreement in April, approved by Paris legislators, in which the fee was increased and the length of the agreement cut from 99 years to 50. It remains unclear whether that, too, will be blocked.

But Ysern said the intent was to apply for building permits and break ground later this year, with construction in the botanical gardens not starting until 2015.

“I’m confident,” Ysern said. “First and foremost because the project is something that is important for the country, and I think the people in authority are aware of that.”

The cost of the project, according to the federation, would be 340 million euros (about $437 million): 20 million from the city of Paris and 320 million from the federation. That burden explains why Ysern is so eager to preserve the option of selling some of the media rights to pay-television networks when the federation’s deal with France Televisions expires this year. Valérie Fourneyron, the country’s minister of sports, told the French newspaper Journal du Dimanche last week that she wanted the entire tournament to remain on free TV even though existing French law only mandates that the men’s and women’s singles final be broadcast.

French tennis officials were not amused.

“We are financing this almost entirely on our own,” Ysern said in his chair, looking as if he had just absorbed another blow. “And then they want to keep us from going out and getting what we need.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 29, 2013, on page B15 of the New York edition with the headline: Without Remake, Roland Garros Faces an Uncertain Future. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe